On November 6th, 2007 Facebook launched a new feature called Beacon which collects data on the behavior of Facebook users on several commercial websites such as eBay, Fandango, Zappos and Overstock.com. [1] When a Facebook user purchases an item at one of these websites, Facebook provides a way for the user to advertise their purchase on their Facebook News Feed.[2] Although early versions of the Beacon service permitted users to decline sending out the advertising, Facebook did not allow users to opt out of the data collection and behavior monitoring.[3][4] After substantial outcry from privacy advocates, on December 6, 2007 Facebook made changes to Beacon that permit everyone to opt out from any data collection; according to Facebook's founder, "If you select that you don't want to share some Beacon actions or if you turn off Beacon, then Facebook won't store those actions even when partners send them to Facebook." [5]

For users of Facebook who would prefer not permit Facebook to collect and share this sort of data, this article offers two easy ways to block Beacon. The first uses Facebook's privacy settings and works with all browsers. The second uses an easy-to-install add-on for the Firefox browser. Follow these simple steps to ensure your private information remains private.

Block Facebook Beacon Using Firefox

Scroll down the page and click on the green Install Now button. Firefox may try to block the installation; if so you will see a yellow bar appear at top of your browser window with text "Firefox prevented this site (addons.mozilla.org) from asking you to install software on your computer." If you see this message, click on the Edit Options... button on the right side of the yellow bar and a small pop-out window will appear.

Click on the "Allow" button on the pop-out window to add this site to the list of sites you permit to install addons.

Close the pop out window by clicking on the red circle in the upper left corner (Mac OS X) or the red "X" at the top right (Microsoft Windows).

Click on the green Install Now button on the Mozilla Add-ons web page a second time. Another small window will appear.

Click on the blue button in the new window to install the BlockSite extension.

Restart Firefox once this extension has been installed to complete the process and enable BlockSite.

3

Click on the Firefox "Tools" menu and select Add-ons (the tools menu is located at the top of your screen next to the Bookmarks menu).

4

Click on Extensions, then on Blocksite, and then on "Options" (for Windows) or Preferences (for Mac/Linux).
.

5

Click on the Add button in the Options/Preferences window.

6

Type this URL in the small box that pops up "http://*facebook.com/beacon/*" and then click on the OK button.

7

Check Options/Preferences window to make sure that the beacon URL shows in the Locations window.

8

Click OK at the bottom of the window to complete the block.

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If you decide to opt out, this information will not be shared with your friends or Facebook. Using Facebook's system, you can opt-out on a company-by-company basis or you can opt-out of Beacon's information sharing system entirely.

You may also wish to review your other privacy settings on Facebook and make sure that you aren't sharing more information than you care to with others.

If using a Firefox add-on, be sure to enter the asterisks as shown after "http://" and before the word "facebook" in the URL as well as after "beacon/" to ensure the add-on blocks sites properly. These asterisks are wildcards that tell the extension to block different iterations of http://facebook.com/beacon/ like http://www.facebook.com/beacon/ and others.

Opera users can go to Tools > Advanced > Blocked Content and add the same URL given above to block Beacon.[6]

The file used by facebook is beacon.js.php. It's code can be viewed by navigating to it and using your browser's "view source" command; this will reveal other PHP scripts used by beacon.[7]

Warnings

Be careful of the personal data you share with social networking sites. Identity thieves are increasingly using sites like Facebook to help them compromise others' identities. [8]

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